


the flowers of Lah’mu

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Flowers, Growing Old Together, Introspection, La Diada de Sant Jordi, Old Married Couple, Older Characters, Retired rebelcaptain, Retirement, Rogue One - some of them live, Roses, St. George's Day, saint george's day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 14:12:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10743321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: There is peace in the galaxy and peace in the fledgling New Republic -- so why can't Jyn find peace in the place that was once her home?





	the flowers of Lah’mu

**Author's Note:**

> This is my story for Saint George's Day 2017, hence the use of roses as an overriding theme. 
> 
> Context and explanations of observance [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George%27s_Day#Catalonia).

She’s here.

She’s back here.

Shivers running up and down her nerves as the cargo hatch begins to yawn open, and she rocks back on her heels: because she’s alive and breathing, and she can’t stop herself from breathing in the scents of this place. The scents of this place that feel like a punch to the gut: the rich black soil and the lifeless tephra; the dampness on the constant breeze; the faint dreamlike waft of the underground river.

She wraps her arms around herself.

She would turn around if she could, flee back into the ship and hide in her bunk, but: it had been her own decision to come back to this place of lost and broken tranquility, this place where she’d been torn away from the warmth of her mother, the warmth of her father.

Footsteps coming up to her: but she can’t see Cassian. She can only feel the presence of him, steadying, just behind her, and to her left –- her blind spot. He is one of the few people allowed to stand in that blind spot, and normally she wouldn’t need to turn her head to confirm that he’s here with her, that he’s protecting her.

But she badly wants to turn: to face him. To deny this ringed planet. To deny this place where once a homestead had been, isolated, only an idea of safety or of anonymity.

Instead she clenches her fists, and makes herself step forward, and the unnaturally heavy tramp of her boots on the floor of the freighter’s cargo hatch rings loudly in her ears, loudly enough to drown out the skittering beat of her heart.

The grass at her feet bends to the fierce strength of the wind, and so does she: she has to brace herself, she has to be tense, just to stand up straight. Just to face a site that she could have still pointed to even if she were deep in the Core Worlds, even if she were on the opposite side of the Outer Rim.

This place used to be home.

And now not even the ruined stones remain.

All that remains to her is the memory and the nightmare of fierce heat and fierce fire, devouring, greedy, and the cry of her mother, the futile defiance of her. The horror in her father’s heart.

Something in her breaks, and breaks loose with a cry, and before she can think and before she can change her course, she’s running forward, stumbling and shambling in the soil that yields beneath her and that shifts beneath her: running towards nothing: not even the remains of the vaporator towers, not even the ashes of Imperial fire.

The vicious thought tears at her mind, unbidden: for hadn’t she made the Empire pay for that fire, several times over, several times more all-consuming?

But not even the memory of seeing not one, but two, Death Stars exploding into silent stillness can bring back the homestead, or the figures of her parents tilling the soil side by side, or Essie as it went about its tasks.

She falls to her knees, and the words on the tip of her tongue are torn from her by the wind, and the tears on her face are cold and swept away.

There are arms around her.

This is familiar, too, in its own way: the only real thing in this world, the only solid thing she could count on. The weight of Cassian by her side, holding her up, holding her together.

“We can go,” he is murmuring into her hair. “We can find some other place. We can turn our backs on this planet.”

“I – I don’t know,” she gasps. “I can’t move.”

So he moves her, so she lets herself be moved: her arms around him, her forehead on his shoulder, her mouth opening and closing around formless words against his chest.

Soft whispering in the air around her, a quiet roar, and she understands what she’s hearing a moment before she feels it: the rain, driving down, falling onto the exposed back of her neck.

And she does what she had done, as a child in these fields: she gets to her feet, and runs, and the weight just behind her almost makes her stumble.

Rocks, looming, and the scant protection of a small overhang, and she tucks herself into that cramped shaded space, tucks herself into the warmth by her side.

For a moment the world all around her dissolves into the pouring rush and the sweeping storm –- but only for a moment.

When she blinks, when she can see once again, she sees Cassian, and the lines in his face and the silvering strands of his hair, and –-

“What is that?” she asks, touching the soft object in his hand: and what a strange thing it is to see this brilliant color, this vivid red, smaller than the palm of her own hand. The dark red hides a slash of yellow in its heart.

“On Fest we called these flowers roses,” is his reply. “But our roses were larger. They could be made to grow in many colors.”

She looks past him to spot the source of the flower: a handful of red buds curving up against the grays of the rocks, startling in the subdued greens of this place. Trailing lines of green, knotted and kinked, skimming the black soil, questing outwards and away from shelter.

“We –- we don’t have to stay here,” Cassian is saying, again. “We can find another place.”

“I –- yes,” she says. “I can’t stay here –- we shouldn’t be here.” And: “Let’s take those flowers with us.”

“That’s a good idea.”

And he has to haul her to her feet: but she does turn to the hollow in the ground where her home might once have been, and say goodbye. The bittersweet shape of that word lingers on her mouth even as they get back into the freighter, as they break atmo, as they prepare to jump into hyperspace.

She allows Cassian to lead her into their bunk –- but before she wraps her arms around him, before she lays down, she places her burden of dark soil and red flowers atop the crates full of their clothes and their sparse belongings, where she’ll see it as soon as she wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> Look me up on tumblr [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


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